Wilmington resolution urges 'equal rights' for sperm

By Sam Wood, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: March 04, 2012

The Wilmington City Council has gone on record urging the U.S. and Delaware governments to confer the "rights of personhood" on each and every human sperm.

In a resolution, the council declared: "Laws should be enacted by all legislative bodies in the United States to promote equal representation, and should potentially include laws in defense of 'personhood,' forbidding every man from destroying his semen."

The resolution passed, 8-4, Thursday night.

Loretta Walsh, the councilwoman who introduced the resolution, told the Wilmington News Journal: "What's good for the gander is good for the goose."

Walsh last month protested a Virginia bill to require women to have an intrusive trans-vaginal ultrasound before having an abortion, according to DelawareOnline.com.

She told the paper and website that the resolution was a "tongue-in-cheek" way of focusing attention on what she called the hypocrisy of men dictating health decisions affecting women's bodies.

"I am standing up for women in this city, I am standing up for women in this state, and I am standing up for the women in this country," Walsh said.

The resolution, sounding like something from a Monty Python skit, says each "egg person" and each "sperm person" should be deemed equal in the eyes of government and given the same rights "as any other dependent minor."